


Cage

by Lirillith



Category: Puella Magi Madoka Magica
Genre: Backstory, Gen, Magical Girls, Witches
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-08-28
Updated: 2011-08-28
Packaged: 2017-10-23 12:40:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 884
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/250415
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lirillith/pseuds/Lirillith
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><em>The birdcage witch. Her nature is rage. She continuously stamps her feet  inside her cage, directing her rage at those who do not respond to her.</em> </p>
            </blockquote>





	Cage

**Author's Note:**

> Written for an image prompt: [this](http://pfirsichblut.deviantart.com/art/Captivity-253983520) was the original prompt image.  I took the idea for her costume from [this piece on Pixiv](http://www.pixiv.net/member_illust.php?mode=medium&illust_id=20263155), and the summary comes straight from [her page on the wiki](http://wiki.puella-magi.net/Roberta).

    Ever since she could remember, she'd thought of her tiny hometown as a cage.  She hated it all: the small-minded people who were born here, and would live here, and die here, never seeing more of the world, never doing anything more than gossiping about each other; the fields, the woods, when all she wanted to see was buildings and city lights; the slow way people moved and thought and spoke.  In her room, she practiced speaking standard Japanese like she heard on TV.  

    She was fifteen when she met Kyubey.  She found it hard to believe there were witches here; that anything at all ever happened here.  But he insisted it was true.  She only needed a wish.  

    She wanted to leave this place, but she could probably do that on her own.  She wanted to prove she was special, different from all the people here, but meeting Kyubey proved that.   
    

    _I want to be beautiful and famous._  

     
    It worked, while she was at school.  Boys confessed to her; some of the other girls didn't like her, but she knew they were jealous.  None of it mattered, because at night, she'd change - into a short black dress with ribbons the teal color of her soul gem - and she'd fly.  Kyubey said that witches were more concentrated in cities, so it was good that her power let her cover so much ground.  She learned to track them, and to fight with the rapier her magic had formed.  She was too exhilarated for the first year to even be tired.  

    When she graduated from high school, she took all of her savings from her after-school job and moved to Tokyo to be a model.  She'd thought that would be the hard part, but everything fell into place, and she was glad she'd wished for fame as well.  At first the agency put her up in an apartment she shared with several other girls, but soon she was earning enough to rent an apartment of her own, a nice one.  Small, compared to the places where she visited some of the men she dated, but luxurious, and she loved every inch of it.  When she didn't have a photo shoot or a fashion show, she patrolled during the day; if she did, she'd find time for it in the evenings, before she went to a club or bar.  She never had to pay for her own drink.  

    She redesigned her costume.  One lace stocking, a band of lace around the other ankle, showing off her legs.  She had nice legs.  Sometimes her soul gem wasn't so nice, because she couldn't always find the time for witch hunts.  Kyubey would chide her for that, and she'd blow him off, on the way out the door for some party or date.  She always took care of it in the end.  

  
    But over time, the tiny confines of her apartment began to seem too small.  She could always leave it, go out to a bar or walk around looking for witches, but she always had to come back to it in the end.  In the bars and clubs, the men around her weren't stars and leading men and important producers anymore; they young men who called themselves actors even though they were really waiters or hosts or bartenders, or they were has-beens, or old businessmen who thought she'd make a good mistress.  She still smiled and laughed and let them buy her drinks, but she recoiled from their flirtation and knowing jokes.  She was pushing thirty, and the work was starting to dry up; her acting career hadn't really panned out.  

    One day, her agent suggested that they needed a new office admin, and it took her a moment to realize that he was dropping a hint.  _Ah,_ she said, _I see,_ and she left his office refusing to weep angry tears.  She was so angry all the time, now, at the men who thought they could get something from her, the new young girls in the ads, at all the people around who didn't realize how much they owed her, at the witches who always had to create their crazy worlds of upside-down trees and playing cards and spiders and bones and hair.  

    It was too early to drink, really, and too cold for walking around the city to appeal.  She thought she should probably go patrolling for witches, but she didn't feel very well, and she hadn't dressed for the cold.  She'd go back to her apartment, she thought, and grab a coat.  Her tiny, tiny apartment, filled with things that had seemed gorgeous and new once, that now seemed shabby and familiar and ugly.  

    She let herself in, and closed the door behind her.  As she slipped out of her shoes in the entryway, she pulled out her soul gem.  Once it had glowed; now it looked as dingy as everything else she owned.  She knew she needed to clean it, but it seemed like she just had.  It didn't seem like it was ever as bright as it had been at first.  Her soul was grimy and she was getting old.  She hadn't left her cage behind when she came to Tokyo; she'd just moved into a new one, and closed the door behind her. 


End file.
